Where Dragons Rule
by KrissyKat91
Summary: While on a search for a Minicon in the mountains of China, Autobot sniper Blurr stumbles across a creature of myth and legend.  Later, while visiting his new friend, Blurr is ambushed and badly damaged by the Decepticons.  Retribution comes in a storm of fury, and the 'Cons swiftly learn to tread lightly in a land where dragons rule.


Blurr glanced around as he stopped next to a sheer cliff. It didn't look like the others had followed him, and his scanners weren't picking Lazerbeak's signal up anywhere.

The sharpshooter sighed, briefly shuttering his optics and pinching the bridge of his olfactory sensor. He knew Prime was getting suspicious of his constant disappearances, but he couldn't stop. She was his, and he would do anything to protect her. Up to and including blasting Lazerbeak out of the sky if he spotted the little camera-bot.

With another quick glance around, Blurr slipped through a crevice in the cliff, hidden unless you knew where it was and were actively looking for it.

"Stardust?" he called as he stepped into the secret valley. "Dusty? Are you there?"

Only silence answered.

'She must be hunting,' he thought, seating himself on a large boulder. 'That's alright. I can wait.'

As he waited, he thought back to how he met her, several months earlier, and couldn't help but chuckle when he remembered how he'd reacted.

 _-/Flashback/-_

 _"_ _Stupid tree," Blurr muttered to himself as he swatted aside yet another branch. "Stupid forest. Stupid planet. I don't know what Prime was thinking, sending me out here. He knows I'm claustrophobic."_

 _It was a proven fact that anybot with flight capabilities, even if all they could do was hover, had some measure of claustrophobia. Now, Blurr didn't have it as bad as, say, a Seeker, but dense forests like this still messed with his processor._

 _"_ _This trip had better be worth it," the sniper grumbled, then paused, optics flickering. He'd seen something out of the corner of his optic… there!_

 _Something was glittering in a portion of a cliff wall that had obviously been hit by a recent rockslide. It wasn't the right color for a Minicon panel, but it couldn't hurt to check. Anything to get out of these trees._

 _Exiting the forest (and immediately feeling better), Blurr found himself standing on a ledge overlooking a spectacular view: mile upon mile of rolling hills and dipping valleys, colored the flaming reds and burnished golds of autumn, set under a cloudless azure sky. And in the distance, winding over the mountains like a great, grey serpent, was the Great Wall of China._

 _"_ _Okay," Blurr breathed, optics wide. "Maybe this_ was _worth it after all."_

 _Shaking his helm, he turned back to the pile of rocks, though not before recording the image into his hard drive. He wasn't forgetting this anytime soon. Climbing up to where he'd seen the glitter, he found an opening in the rocks and peered through._

 _A vibrant carmine eye larger than his helm, with a vertical black slit for a pupil, stared back at him._

 _Blurr jerked back, optics flickering rapidly, then looked again._

 _The eye was still there, only this time it blinked at him, briefly revealing a scaly blue/silver eyelid._

 _"_ _Erm, hello?" the sharpshooter asked slowly._

 _A low rumble, as if from some massive beast, answered him. Blurr gulped._

 _"_ _U-uh, are you—are you stuck? Do you need help?"_

 _A hissing growl came this time._

 _"_ _Right," he muttered, sliding back down the rocks. "Hopefully this won't come back to bite me."_

 _Quickly calculating which rock needed to be removed to free whatever was trapped beneath them, Blurr pulled his rifle from his subspace compartment, took aim, and fired._

 _And was promptly blasted backwards as something absolutely enormous erupted from within a crevice that had been hidden under the rocks._

 _Gathering up his wits (and to a lesser extent, his pride; it wasn't often he was caught off guard like that), Blurr stumbled to his pedes and looked up. And up. And up._

 _"_ _By the AllSpark!" he croaked, terror latching onto his Spark like a vice. The trumpeting scream that followed didn't help._

 _-/End Flashback/-_

SNAP!

Blurr tensed, breaking out of his memories, as something in the forest broke a twig. It wasn't Stardust, that was for certain. She liked sneaking up and scaring the scrap out of him too much to let herself make a mistake like that.

In one fluid motion, the sniper was on his pedes, gripping his rifle. He stood there, stock still, straining all his sensors for even the smallest sound or movement.

The bamboo off to the side rustled slightly, and Blurr quickly leveled the business end of his rifle at it.

"Who's there?" he growled.

For a long moment there was no more movement. Blurr lowered his rifle and, unfortunately, his guard. The next thing the Autobot knew, a bolt of energy was tearing through his side. Clutching the injury, Blurr collapsed with a cry of pain.

"Well done, Demolisher," a terrifyingly familiar voice purred from somewhere above him. "Your aim seems to be improving."

"Thanks, I think," another voice replied, this one distinctly surlier.

Prying one optic open, Blurr looked up to see the towering form of Megatron looming over him.

The warlord smirked coldly. "Now this is interesting. One Autobot, alone in the middle of nowhere. Tell me, sharpshooter, what has Prime so interested that he keeps sending you out here?"

Gritting his dental plates, Blurr managed to gasp, "No-nothing. Come here… on… my own."

Crimson optics narrowed. "Do you think me a fool? Starscream!"

The Decepticon in question moved into Blurr's line of vision, and some distant part of the Autobot was surprised at how exhausted the Seeker looked.

"Show this Autobot why it is a foolish idea to lie to me. Perhaps then he will be more accommodating."

Starscream's jaw struts tightened, but he silently drew his sword.

Blurr grimaced behind his mask, wishing he hadn't dropped his rifle. A winged shadow fell over him, and he looked up to lock gazes with Starscream.

The Seeker hesitated, mouthed "I'm sorry", and raised his sword. And then it happened.

It was a sound unlike any other, a sound that started out as a low rumble, like far away thunder, before abruptly raising to a screaming crescendo. At the same time the sky, which had previously been empty, suddenly came alive with a roiling thunderstorm just waiting to strike.

As the Decepticons looked around wildly, Blurr managed a weak laugh.

"You… should run."

They never got the chance, for out of the forest came a creature unlike any Cybertron had ever boasted.

It was covered from snout to tail in azure scales, almost fish-like in appearance, each one glittering with what seemed to be silver dust. Its legs and feet were shaped like that of a jungle cat, with the cruel, curved talons of some bird of prey on each toe. Its head was vaguely lupine in shape, bearing whiskers like a catfish and a set of lion-esque fangs. A pair of ivory antlers crowned its skull, set among long silver spines that gave the illusion of fur. The spines traveled all the way down the beast's ten foot neck, its forty feet of back, and ended four fifths of the way down its ten foot tail, the remaining fifth occupied by a flame shaped growth that looked perfectly capable of bashing the brains out of whatever it was aimed at.

And its eyes. Its eyes were the worst. A huge pair of blood red orbs with slitted pupils, glaring down from their hight of thirty feet with seething fury.

Fury, and the intelligence to put it to use.

"Oh… dear… Primus…" Thrust whimpered from somewhere out of Blurr's line of sight.

The azure dragon screamed again, and the heavens unleashed their wrath.


End file.
